Spain train crash: How safe is high-speed rail travel?

Spain has the finest high-speed rail network in Europe. But on Sunday evening, 18 January, dozens of passengers were killed when an Iryo train from Malaga to Madrid derailed and collided with a Renfe Madrid to Huelva express at Adamuz in the southern province of Andalusia.

The tragedy will raise concerns among prospective travellers about the safety of high-speed trains. These are the key questions and answers.

The worst accident in the 21st century was at Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain in July 2013. The driver of the express from Madrid took a curve at more than twice the permitted speed. In the derailment, 79 people died.

In June 1998, a German ICE train from Munich to Hamburg derailed after part of a steel wheel, weakened by metal fatigue, was caught in points – tripping them, and sending the rear of the train on a separate track. The train collided with a road bridge, which then collapsed; 101 people were killed.

In recent years the greatest tragedy was at Tempi in Greece in February 2023, when an intercity train from Athens to Thessaloniki collided with a freight train; 57 people died.

In each of the four years from 1999 to 2002, passengers lost their lives in serious accidents:

Since then there have been fatal derailments at Greyrigg in Cumbria in February 2007, in which one passenger died; and at Carmont in Scotland in August 2020, killing the driver, a conductor and a passenger.

Britain is super-safe for rail passengers. Cars cover around 250 billion miles in the UK each year, corresponding to about 380 billion person-miles. The figure for rail is around 50 billion passenger-miles annually.

Sadly, around 1,650 people die on the roads of the UK each year. Were rail to have the same death toll, there would be 215 fatalities annually. Almost every year, there are none.

The UK also has an extraordinarily good air safety record, with no fatal accidents involving British passenger jets since the 1980s. The world’s safest airline in terms of passengers flown without a fatal accident, Ryanair, has its biggest operations in the UK.

Spain, sadly, is the nation with the worst recent history for rail deaths. The Independent calculates around 18 billion passenger-miles are completed on the Spanish high-speed network annually, compared with 250 billion person-miles by car. The road accident rate is significantly higher in Spain than the UK. Were high-speed rail to have the same death toll, there would be around 125 fatalities annually.

Trains remain much safer. Carriages are designed to protect passengers, and they are driven by highly trained professionals on lines with many safety systems in place.

Elsewhere in Europe, far fewer passengers have lost their lives in rail accidents in recent years.

These figures do not include people who die by suicide on the railways, or who are struck by trains in accidents.